Key Art production for Planet3

As part of the game modules we created for DC-based Planet3, we were asked to create a series of print-res promotional posters to capture the drama of each game.

As part of the game modules we created for DC-based Planet3, we were asked to create a series of print-res promotional posters to capture the drama of each game.

We identified key moments and using in-game Unity 3D assets, composed the scenes and positioned player avatars to maximize composition.

Basic lighting and cubemaps were dropped in to rough in tone and overall mood.

Using a custom script, each layer of the scene was rendered out at a very high resolution for compositing.

Elements were enhanced and reworked for a final overpaint and poster delivery…

…and the process repeated for each additional module.

Climate Module

Volcano Module

Plants Module

May 16, 2016

Lighting for Mobile VR

The goal was to drop users into the action, allow them to choose Captain America or Iron Man and then fight their way through 8 levels of Crossbones and his Henchmen.

Multi-lightmap walkthrough for Kellogg’s Marvel’s Civil War VR

The goal of Kellogg’s Marvel’s Civil War VR was to drop users into the action of the feature, allow them to choose Captain America or Iron Man and then fight their way through 8 levels of Crossbones and his Henchmen. The levels themselves were created from film references – with a generous helping of our own creative interpretation – and resulted in 3 main maps: Lagos, Berlin and the Leipzig Airport.

We set the experience in the early evening to help reduce eye strain but in large part it was to allow for much more dramatic lighting. But because our target was mobile VR we were severely limited in what we could do with real-time lights and shadows. To ensure the experience ran across as many devices as possible, we would need to bake the lighting into the scenes using light maps.

Traditionally, light maps meant static lighting. Our goal, however, was to build an experience that was much more dynamic. This lead us to the Multi-light maps technique: a way to get a lot more life into a VR environment without breaking the lighting budget.

Here’s a breakdown of the Multi-lightmap process:

First, the environments were divided into sectors. Each sector was given one main light and a couple accent lights. Generally, the main light is something like sunlight or other primary light source that is consistent throughout all sectors. The accent lights are secondary light sources such as lamp posts or traffic signals and have their own color and intensity animated as needed. These lights should not affect any objects outside their sector or unexpected results may occur. Once we had our map subdivided into sectors we began lighting. This is where we took a different approach: Instead of baking the light colour and intensity, we used the light map to just bake light position and shadows. This was accomplished by using the RGB channels of the light map to store the lighting information for each light.

These 3 channels is the reason we are limited to one main and two accent lights per sector. Red could be used for the main light while blue and green are used for the two accents, for example. This gave us something that looked like this:

In this case, the red channel was used as consistent point lighting throughout the Lagos market rather than a directional light that might be used in a daylight setting. An ambient occlusion pass, saved as an alpha channel, was also included in the light map and, with a custom shader we assigned colour and intensity to each of the channels and ended up with something like this:

One of the benefits of controlling lighting intensity and colour through a shader is it becomes easy to make adjustments to lighting in real time. The image below is using the same light maps with different colours and intensities assigned in the materials.

Since the ambient occlusion pass is also available through the shader more drastic lighting changes can be easily achieved such as changing the night scene to an overcast day:

Again, this is achieved by adjusting material settings using the same initial RBG light map. With all these lighting options tied to materials it can be difficult to sync all the color setting across materials in each sector – and even harder to animate them all. To solve this, we came up with a Light Manager script.

This script is added to a null object and pulls in all material attributes from objects within its volume which makes them editable in one place. An animation controller is then added allowing the lights to be animated using only one animation clip per sector. This, in turn, allows all objects affected by the same light to have the same settings even if a different material is being used – making it a very powerful tool.

The three light managers for the Lagos map can be seen in yellow below:

Once we had the environment looking the way we wanted, we realized we would have skinned characters – Crossbones’ henchmen – running through these maps. And if they were not affected by the flickering lights or by passing through the pools of light that made up the levels, it would break the immersion.

The Light Manager gave us access to all of the colours and intensities of the lights so it was a matter of coming up with a way to apply these to a mesh without a static light map. The key was utilizing light probes – though not exactly in the way they were intended. In the same way the light maps were re purposed, lighting probes were baked with the same RGB light data as the static light maps. But since the original lighting is baked outside of Unity, the lighting set-up had to be mirrored in Unity to bake the probes.

To this end, we wrote a shader that was similar to the one that was used for the light maps but instead used the RGB channels of the lighting probes. Since all of the material attributes were named the same in the Light Manager, we were able to apply the same colour and intensity to the skinned meshes as we did for the environments. This allowed the henchmen to blend into the scene seamlessly, picking up accent lights and, in the example below, flickering lights:

This technique was used to throughout out the entire project allowing us to create dynamic lighting effects and enhancing the immersive feel of the experience without using a single real time light.

Google Cardboard Developer Tools: Black Screen Issue

In the interest of sharing our experiences and furthering the Cardboard community, we wanted to share an issue we dealt with during development of some VR experiences and how we fixed it.

Google Cardboard has brought virtual reality to masses with it’s simple, effective, and inexpensive design. In the interest of sharing our experiences and furthering the Cardboard community, we wanted to share an issue we dealt with during development of some VR experiences and how we fixed it.

We started to experience a strange bug on iOS devices when testing our apps that would give us a black screen saying “Let’s get you set up” instead of actual game view. By looking at the Debug.Log() messages, it was clear that the game was working and seemed to be running behind the black screen. After trying several work-arounds, the “Let’s get you set up” message was still blocking the view. Although we strongly believe in the power of Google, a thorough search did not produce any results on how to fix this. So we started to dig in.

After a couple of hours of banging our heads against the wall, we noticed that this screen appears after the game is started and a couple of frames where rendered. It seemed it was definitely related to iOS SDK and was probably some ViewController pushed on top of the game view controller. So we decided to find out where that code was called from.

After some file “grep’ing” we found out that these texts are stored in libplatform.a binary and we had no source code of it. The next step was to try to prevent this code from executing and we started exploring all of the SDK code we had hoping to find out calling points. Luckily, the solution came pretty easily from there. The CardboardAppController.mm has a couple of functions, and one of them is “void launchOnboardingDialog(){…}” so by just commenting it’s content we solved this black screen problem!

Hopefully this helps some of you out there who may be dealing with the same issue. This was a quick fix, but we are working on a solution that will stop this problem from happening in the first place. Stay tuned…

November 3, 2014

Augmented Reality: When What You Really Want Isn’t Close at Hand, but Your Phone Is

You really want Polaris’ new Slingshot, I mean really, really want it. It’s a super-slick, three-wheeled ATV that looks way better than that Speed Buggy thing we all saw on Saturday morning cartoons. Great. So what’s stopping you from taking a look at it? Well, as of now only a few showrooms have it and none of them are near you.

No problem. Polaris’ Slingshot 360º App has you covered. Using augmented reality technology, you can see the Slingshot from every angle imaginable.

Bully! in collaboration with Integer Group created the app with the latest in Augmented Reality technology from Vuforia, a product of Qualcomm Connected Experiences, Inc. The actual machine may not be in front of you, but it feels close at hand because of the stunning detail captured in the Unity3D-based model. The virtual vehicle can be rotated and scaled for optimal viewing and interaction.

Augmented reality has a real strength in the practical application of increasing customer interaction prior to full-scale product launch. The time-to-market window is shrinking and revisions and adjustments are being made right up to the time a product is made available to the public. Feedback loops are faster and more direct from consumer straight to producer. Augmented reality creates a dialogue that is grounded in a more hands-on experience without actually seeing the product in person.

So go ahead, download the Slingshot 360º app and experience it for yourself. You don’t even have to leave your couch.

May 8, 2012

2012 ADDY Awards

Bully! had the pleasure of contributing to three Gold ADDY-winning 2011 campaigns, one of which took home Best of Show and an additional Gold for the visual effects work, at last month’s ADDY awards.

Trio of Bully! directed projects help bring home Gold for Baltimore agencies.

Bully! had the pleasure of contributing to three Gold ADDY-winning 2011 campaigns, one of which took home Best of Show and an additional Gold for the visual effects work, at last month’s ADDY awards.

Planit’s Best in Show, Multimedia Campaign for Gilgal Wines featured 4 ‘found footage’ videos directed by Bully!’s Carlson Bull. The VFX scenes depicted hikers and a motorist couple happening upon a field of floating rocks, helicopter footage of the Gilgal structure in the Golan Heights surrounded by floating boulders and a faked Israeli newscast reporting the events – all of which were shot, edited, tracked and comped in house. The VFX work itself was also tapped for Gold ADDY recognition of its own.

For Pivec Advertising’s Gold ADDY, Bully! created five :30 2D/3D animated spots for theToyota’s Make the Jump Campaign. The spots featured the full line up of 3D vehicles each with their own ‘sticker family’ making the jump from a competitor to a Toyota vehicle.

The third campaign, another project with Planit was an animated intro for the Double Positive Website. Bully! designed, directed and animated a stylized short dispelling the notion that online marketing can be scary.

March 12, 2012

COBRA PUMA Golf – Gyroscopic Games

How fast can you shoot flying oranges out of the sky? How fast can you do it without falling down the stairs?

How fast can you shoot flying oranges out of the sky? How fast can you do it without falling down the stairs? Download the COBRA Orange Out game from the App store, and you can answer both of these questions. Using the iPhone’s gyroscopic capabilities, Bully! created the game to allow golfers stuck inside for whatever reason to get their virtual hands on a COBRA’s line of AMP clubs and obliterate flying oranges to their heart’s content.

Check it out if you are itching for some time on the back nine, but life seems to be getting in the way. A word of warning though, do watch out for stairwells.